


if home is where the heart is then we're all just fucked

by youhaventyet



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-12 23:06:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2127840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youhaventyet/pseuds/youhaventyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it doesn’t make sense, the way it works. how kiyoshi sees it, it’s like your body belongs to someone else; theirs to use and destroy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if home is where the heart is then we're all just fucked

**Author's Note:**

> i saw [this](http://spiderjockey.tumblr.com/post/91277093285/soulmate-au-where-only-your-soulmate-can-kill-you) on tumblr and run away with it.

hanamiya makoto is the kind of man who'd put a band-aid on a broken knee. pressing down to make it stick, ignoring you when you start crying because it _hurts_ , he’d look up at you, smiling sweetly, and say “this will make it all better,” the both of you knowing he’s lying.

 

the first thing kiyoshi hears out of hanamiya’s mouth is “how do i kill my way out of this one?” his voice is a lazy, almost-friendly drawl, but there’s a glint in his eyes, like he’s not joking at all. he’s looking at kiyoshi’s bloody hand with a pleased smile curling his lips up at the corners, in the sweetest, cruelest grin he’s ever seen.

 

people die all the time, and it’s only natural. bodies are brittle things, made to break: illnesses, aging, a steep flight of stairs drenched in rain; all and more of this can and does happen.

the thing is: you can catch a mortal disease, you can break your head on hard concrete, but the only one who can put an end to your life is your soulmate. no other person can kill you, or, for the matter, hurt you. if somebody else tried, you’d be unscathed.

it doesn’t make sense, the way it works. how kiyoshi sees it, it’s like your body belongs to someone else; theirs to use and destroy.

 

hanamiya makoto has a sweet face and a sweet mouth, and the bangs of his oil-black hair fall over his forehead in a delicate sweep. he tucks razor blades between his knuckles, and waits to see if a red welt will raise on your skin and start bleeding when he brushes up against you.

“how do i kill my way out of this one?” hanamiya says, looking at the blood welling up on kiyoshi’s hand after handing him a book. they’re in the campus library, and he picks the red-stained razor blade out from between his middle and ring finger, and puts it in kiyoshi’s palm, like he’s giving a candy to a kid, pressing down.

new cuts bloom on his skin, shallow but red still.

 

“it just feels too meaningful to pass, you know,” hanamiya says, almost dismissive, over his coffee cup. unsurprisingly, he takes it black. “i can only hurt one single person in the whole world. i better get down to it.”

he’s swinging his feet under the table, aiming kicks at kiyoshi’s ankles every few minutes. he can feel bruises blooming on his skin, tingling and throbbing. he wonders if this is what love feels like.

“and what about getting hurt by them?” he asks, sipping at his frappuccino through a straw, gullible as you please.

hanamiya’s eyes shine, specks of gold around his pupils reflecting the light like the shreds of a shattered church window.

 

kiyoshi has thought about it, really. after his grandma told him what happened to his parents, he’s been thinking about it at all times, specially late at night, staring up at his bedroom ceiling, full of wonder. soulmates, and how they can undo you.

the day he meets hanamiya, the first thing he does after coming home is putting the blood stained razor blade he gave him in his hanafuda box, wrapped in a handkerchief, to keep it safe.

then, he sits on his bed, and wraps the band-aids he bought at the convenience store around his cut up fingers. they have tiny kittens on them.

when they meet the next day, hanamiya sees them, and scoffs, tearing them away so harshly kiyoshi’s skin turns red and stays like that for hours.

 

the first time they kiss, hanamiya tears his lip open with his teeth. kiyoshi keeps kissing him, and when they part, he looks at the blood coating hanamiya’s mouth and sighs, content.

 

“can you tell me your class schedule?” kiyoshi asks, the third time they meet at a coffee shop near campus. “so i know when i can meet you.”

hanamiya laughs in his face. “do you really think i’m studying with you lot?” and, at kiyoshi’s perplexed expression, grinning. “i’m not a student, idiot. i’m a lecturer. i can do whatever the fuck i want with my schedule.”

kiyoshi frowns. “but aren’t you my same age?”

“yeah, and? i’m smarter than anyone in this dump.” he’s holding kiyoshi’s hand under the table, nails embedded in the flesh of his wrist so deep he starts to feel the skin tear, slowly, slowly.

 

“you’re being awfully clumsy, lately,” his grandma says as they’re folding the clean laundry together, one day. “haven’t you, dear?”

kiyoshi blinks - he hasn’t dropped anything - and then realizes she’s looking at his cut up hands and bruised forearms.

he laughs, sheepish, scratches at his nape. “ah, yeah.”

 

there are ten rubik cubes on the windowsill of hanamiya’s room, all of them solved. an overflowing ashtray sits on his bedside table, and his fridge is packed with a ridiculous amount of dark chocolate tablets and little else. the blinds are drawn, and there whole apartment feels airless.

when hanamiya pushes him down on the bed, with its mussed sheets and creaky frame, kiyoshi doesn’t have to bite on his tongue to keep himself from asking if he’s doing okay - if he’s ever lonely in this place, if he eats enough and sleeps enough. 

hanamiya does it for him.

 

there are little cracks in hanamiya’s facade kiyoshi learns to easily slip in. hanamiya keeps his nails long, but the skin around them is always chewed up and red. his eyes are impossible to describe, brown and golden and grey and sometimes so flat you could have trouble thinking there’s a human brain behind them. the skin around them is purplish with lack of sleep.

sometimes, he forgets to wash his hair and shakes it away from his face with an irritable flick of his neck.

he’s almost too thin, the outline of his ribs visible from under his skin, looking deceptively fragile when kiyoshi spreads his hands on his sides.

he always bites too hard, scratches too deep, and sometimes, it feels like he’s trying to weasel himself under kiyoshi’s flesh and curl right around his heart, ready to squeeze until it stops.

he hates that kiyoshi notices all of this.

 

“have you befriended a rowdy cat or something?” riko asks him, when they meet for coffee to catch up, three months after he’s met hanamiya.

kiyoshi walks with a slight limp and has long cuts going down his arms and crisscrossing on his back. the hickeys on his neck look more like gruesome bite marks than love bites, throbbing in time with his heart.

he smiles. riko is looking at him like she already knows everything he’s not saying. “or something,” he admits, tilting his head down.

 

 _you look like a real idiot_ , hanamiya had said. _how do i kill my way out of this one?_

kiyoshi had smiled, then, and thought, _yeah, how?_


End file.
